Highest-paid CEOs are mostly media moguls. Who's at the top?

Six media executives were among the top 10 highest-paid CEOs in the US, earning a combined 364.2 million in 2014. Discovery Communications' David Zaslav made $156.1 million, almost quadrupling his salary from 2013.

|
Fred Prouser/Reuters/File
David M. Zaslav, President and Chief Executive Officer of Discovery Communications speaks at the Television Critics Association Cable TV Summer press tour in Beverly Hills, California. Zaslav was the highest-paid CEO in 2014, making $156.1 million.

Despite tumultuous stock prices, CEOs from media and entertainment companies are seeing their pay on a consistent rise.

Six media company executives are among the top 10 highest-paid CEOs in the US, according to a list released by the Associated Press Tuesday. AP created the list using its own information and data from Equilar, a company that tracks executive compensation data. 

Discovery Communications' CEO David Zaslav topped the list, making $156.1 million in 2014. Zaslav, who has led the pay-TV programmer since 2007, recently renewed his contract – and his earnings jumped 368 percent in a year. The parent company of the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC has seen its stock fall nearly 20 percent since last year to $32.74 as of 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Leslie Moonves of CBS Corporation came in second, earning a third of Zaslav's compensation at $54.4 million. Viacom's Philippe Dauman, Walt Disney's Robert Iger, Comcast's Brian Roberts, and Time Warner's Jeffrey Bewkes also made the list.

The top 10 highest-paid executives made a total of 524.8 million in 2014. The six media moguls took home 364.2 million. Yet, the stock performances of these companies has been mixed. Iger earned $43.7 million in 2013, up 27 percent from last year, and Disney's stocks have risen 30 percent year-to-year. Roberts earned $33 million, though Comcast's stocks have remain stagnant in the last year, hovering between $24 and $25. 

For employees who are not in a starring role or the C-suite, salaries cover a much wider range, especially for people working at the local level. A 2014 survey conducted by the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University found that salaries for 18 different positions within local television news rose just 1.6 percent last year, barely outpacing a 1.5 percent rise in inflation. The average news reporter made $39,800, while news anchors were compensated for $82,200 on average. For larger companies, salaries tend to run on the higher end. 

As their salaries increase, executives at Discovery, CBS, and the rest will have to continue to watch how streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu affect their numbers. Traditional cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner have seen their subscribers go down about 3 percent per quarter from the first quarter of 2012 to the second quarter of 2014, according to telecommunications research firm MoffettNathanson via Bankrate.com. That does not mean traditional television corporations are out just yet – CBS and HBO announced their own streaming services back in October, while DirecTV started offering non-subscribers its NFL Sunday Ticket service via the Internet, according to Bankrate.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Highest-paid CEOs are mostly media moguls. Who's at the top?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0526/Highest-paid-CEOs-are-mostly-media-moguls.-Who-s-at-the-top
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe